REACTION
Daniel Carey
JOHN O’Mahony has said that Mayo must ‘grab’ their second chance ‘with both hands’ despite the county’s poor record in the Qualifiers. The county have not made a major impact through the so-called ‘back door’ system since it was introduced in 2001. But O’Mahony, whose second All-Ireland success with Galway came after a Connacht final defeat, says that Mayo should not get too hung up on past records.
“That’s maybe sometimes what kills us in the GAA, that we look at what happened in 1903 and say ‘Sure, it’ll happen again’. I don’t believe in that. I think you make your own luck. [But] I know from the Qualifier route down the years in all the teams I’ve been with, there is a vulnerability, because you’ve just lost your last match. The key to it is to get back up and win a match, and then you could be back on the road again.”
O’Mahony said that it may be a disadvantage to be playing against a team who will be coming off the back of two successive victories, but added: “There’s a lot of good footballers, a lot of good characters, in this side [so] let’s get on with it.”
The Mayo squad met up in Claremorris last night (Monday) to discuss the fallout from Sunday’s defeat. County players will return to their clubs for the rest of the week ahead of next weekend’s club championship, before Mayo regroup and try, as O’Mahony put it, ‘to get back into the mainstream’.
“Maybe we showed them a little bit too much respect in the first half,” the Ballaghaderreen clubman added. “We dropped a few shots in the goalie’s hands and things like that, and you’ll look back on them now and say, ‘if only’. But what we have to deal with is what’s in the future … It’s not going to be easy.
“It’s very disappointing,” he said of the defeat. “We showed a lot of character in the second half to come back and go ahead. I thought we might have kicked on and shut it out at that stage. But we didn’t and this is where we find ourselves now. We have no choice now but to take the qualifier route.”
The Mayo manager said that Trevor Mortimer’s hamstring injury was a ‘severe blow’ as the Shrule man had been ‘taking the game’ to Galway before he was forced off. He paid tribute to the character displayed by ‘young and old’ in the Mayo squad but added: “We don’t do moral victories”.
O’Mahony made two tactical changes before half time, withdrawing full-back Kieran Conroy and corner back Colm Boyle. A number of the substitutes who were introduced made a positive impression, and some could be pushing hard for starting places in the round three Qualifiers.
“We had guys with injuries or coming back from injuries, and we had a lot of experience on the bench,” he said. “We had to readjust a little bit … everyone on any given day can play their part in turning things around. We nearly did it but nearly isn’t good enough today.”
